Advogato blog for xiphmonthttp://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/
Advogato blog for xiphmonten-usmod_virguleSun, 2 Aug 2015 20:23:51 GMTSun, 4 Feb 2001 07:20:36 GMT4 Feb 2001http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=9
http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=9Wow. I just realized it's been six months since I made a
diary entry. I used to do that as a kid too; I couldn't
ever keep a diary going. In fact, it seems I'm a horrid
flake about everything except code. "Not the kind of guy
who writes letters".
<p> Well, I really am still here...Mon, 31 Jul 2000 03:48:20 GMT31 Jul 2000http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=8
http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=8Jake makes a few decent points about the web of trust. I
didn't grant him master status on an unfounded,
light-hearted whim regardless of his rampant modesty,
although I must admit Jake may currently qualify as a
'lapsed-master'. He got in there and did stuff. He was his
own Jake. He was creative with the knowledge he possessed.
Who among the early Web snobs could forget 'Matthew and
Jake's Adventures'. It was one of the first web pages I saw
that had *pictures*.<p>
<p> So Jake, Isn't it weird that I'm talking about you as if you
aren't reading this? ;-)<p>
<p> Anyway, Since Jake insists, I'm downgrading him to
'dimwit'. Oops, wait... where did that one go? Sigh, you
seal yourself in a cave for six months and the whole world
changes :-)<p>
<p> I see the 'old boys network' article... I'm afraid to read
it becuase I knwo I'll spend the whole night responding. Of
*course* anything of note is run by an 'old boys network'.
Every human endeavor of more than one person is a social
affair involving social webs, and those that arrive first
tend to be at the core of that web. Is that *really* a
surprise to anyone? The only time that's destructive is
when those at the core are primarily concerned with staying
at the core or abusing the position.<p>
Thu, 27 Jul 2000 08:39:12 GMT27 Jul 2000http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=7
http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=7Jake (harrisj) is here! I've missed you jake!<p>
<p> <p> (For those who don't know him, Jake was one of the
world's
first webmasters. He'll tell you of the stories of
line-by-line HTML readers and how he used to get a message
for every hit www.mit.edu took...<p>
<p> <p> OK, back to what I was going to say (I've just really
missed
Jake).<p>
<p> <p> So many months have passed since the last diary entry.
"Not
the kind of guys who write letters" keeps cycling in my
head.<p>
<p> <p> Vorbis went Beta. It goes Beta2 this weekend and
hopefully
1.0 final before LinuxWorld in august. To quote jwz, "we're
doomed/golden" (ask alternating hours).<p>
<p> <p> <blockquote>
[21:40:07] &lt;cranky&gt; xiphmont: the 128kbps sample you
sent me
sounds better than the sample I have with full quality at
128kbps encoded with fraunhofer's mp3enc!!
</blockquote>
<p> <p> I guess it's a golden hour then.<p>
<p> <p> I'm still gaining proficiency on my motorcycle, scraping
floorboards on leisurely trips in the mountains, etc.
Haven't
dropped it yet, but I know the day is coming (hoping it to
be an embarrassing 0mph in a parking lot event). Also <a
href="http://www.xiph.org/xiphmont/bike/project.html">spent
weeks of brazing, cutting, wiring, customizing</a>. BTW,
the folks at Corbin saddles are a bunch of assholes. Don't
buy from them unless you feel like dealing with the World's
Most Abusive Customer Service. Think 'Bank of Ethel' except
they yell at you alot more.
<p> <p> Another advantage of motorcycles has now become
apparent; I
no longer am limited to escaping my wife on foot ;-)<p>
<p> <p> Wellp, back to work. Just found a bug in psy.c (a good
thing!) that means I have to redo all the tuning for the
high bitrate modes (a bad thing).<p>
Mon, 22 May 2000 06:52:09 GMT22 May 2000http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=6
http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=6Not much to say today, I guess. Unless it's "Let the
flaming begin"....Tue, 9 May 2000 05:32:24 GMT9 May 2000http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=5
http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=5Well. The Grand Merge happened, and the bitstream format
froze. It is a good thing. The libs are at 1.0. The
missing features now are just that; missing features. Some
moderately important (proper short packet handling, error
return codes instead of just '-1', and so on) but still
just.... missing features.
<p> Oh, and tuning. There's more tuning to do. But we beat mp3
across the board now. That's what it's all about, eh? I can
worry about other things for a little while before I try the
Next 5 Month Plan To Improve Residue Vector Classification.
<p> Oh, and another day without doing anything mildly
embarrassing on the motorcycle. I must be improving.
<p> Monty
Thu, 4 May 2000 05:13:18 GMT4 May 2000http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=4
http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=4Good lord is it late.
<p> Not late today. Or this week. Not particularly late this
month either. I'm nearly halfway through 2000 and no Vorbis
1.0 yet. September last year, Jack asked me about how far
off 1.0 was, and I replied a month till demo, another to
production.
<p> Sometimes my deadpan sense of humor just kills me. Much
more often it just conspires to keep me from sleeping.
<p> That I'm posting my first diary entry in about a month is a
good sign though. Things are finally in better shape than
they were three weeks ago. Everything's reassembled. A
little tuning, and hopefully some codebooks...
<p> This morning I solved a small algorithm hassle that had been
bugging me the past three days. I realized that I'd had a
variant of the exact same problem in Grad Skool as an
optional part of a final project, and that at the time I'd
failed to solve in linear time (as was required for
credit). Having come up with a solution this time makes me
feel better.
<p> So much has happened since last entry. I've finished my
motorcycle training and now am the proud ownder of a Honda
Shadow ACE1100cc cruiser. Mmm. Nice, reliable, vaguely
unhip bike that's damned fun to ride. I'm still working up
to regularly having days without any minor embarrassing
mishaps.
<p> Ever forgot to turn your fuel valve on? I did that day 3.
Hit the horn instead of the turn signal cancel?
Repeatedly? Day 4.
<p> ...or duckwalk the bike backward into the garage, tip just a
little too far (it weighs 700 lbs) and nearly drop it while
looking over your shoulder? Yeah, day 12.
<p> Almost every day I manage to shift into neutral instead of
first at least once.
<p> Today I was in the parking lot, stopped in first gear (and
knew it) and before starting off developed an itch on my
nose. I reached up to scratch it... with my left hand.
Thank god a V-twin has no idle torque!
<p> So many ways to look like an idiot on a motorcycle, so
little time ;-)
<p> Monty
Thu, 13 Apr 2000 03:15:46 GMT13 Apr 2000http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=3
http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=3Funny how these things get named after a while; yesterday I
fixed the 'blorp' bug in the new Vorbis psychoacoustics,
today I fixed a 'gravel' bug. (I hope) Two damn near
impossible to find things.... introduced during code
cleanups. <p>
<p> And now that we got slashdotted (motherfish stayed up! Woo
hoo! Stayed more responsive than Slashdot itself, after I
added 8M ;-) I'm realizing how time consuming writing
intelligent replies to email really is (again). D'oh.
Tue, 4 Apr 2000 06:40:16 GMT4 Apr 2000http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=2
http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=2Thought for today, just to sum it all up:<br>
<em>"Life is about the balance between stopping to smell the
roses and flat out 24/7 caffeine poisoning."</em><p>
<p> I think I'll go shake some more. That automatic espresso
maker in my kitchen is the best/worst thing to ever happen
to me...
Sat, 1 Apr 2000 11:37:00 GMT1 Apr 2000http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=1
http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=1Hangups always happen in the smallest details. It took no
time at all to build an entire new psychoacoustic engine
from scratch (once I managed to track down the appropriate
research papers), but something simple like mapping the new
log scales onto the existing codebook abstraction turns out
to suck time because I hadn't stopped to think about it long
enough...<p>
<p> <p> (How do you add a number to -Inf? You don't; you find a
way
to avoid doing so. There went wednesday night through
Saturday)<p>
<p> <p> The hard part is never getting something to work. The
hard
part is building an abstraction you won't be ashamed of two
weeks later.... especially vital in the case where the
abstraction could well last 20 years. Bad way to lose alot
of time when chasing an unreasonable deadline....<p>
<p> <p> Anyway, the major hangups are past I hope; decode is
certainly clean and I can live with well documented hacks
that are encoder only. Integration of the New Stuff (tm)
with libvorbis is first-pass coding complete, but totally
untested. I'll do that after sleep. After making sure it
works, time to build codebooks--- after adding log
quantization code to the trainer. Gaah.<p>
<p> <p> At least the end rush will just be for the website.
Fri, 31 Mar 2000 05:19:36 GMT31 Mar 2000http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=0
http://www.advogato.org/person/xiphmont/diary.html?start=0The "Long March" toward Vorbis's first real release
continues. Tonight I finish integrating the new
psychoacoustic engine and hopefully build codebooks. Once
that's done, the new work goes on the CVS main branch.<p>
<p> Over the weekend, libvorbis and vorbisfile should be at
First Cut.
The goal is to have the libs at release, at least one player
plugin (probably XMMS and maybe Winamp) at release grade and
the command line 'it just works' encoder running. A website
update has to happen beginning of next week. Then we start
screaming for attention :-)